Transcript (en)

I pulled this out of the gut of a 14-year-old girl. Any idea what it is? I have never seen anything like it. Me neither. Care to find out? Yeah. We removed this foreign body from your stomach. That was inside her? What is it? Shannon. It's mine. I need it back. Is that something you made in the basement? You made that? Tell them what it is. It's a prototype. For what? A robot. A robot? The idea is you swallow it. You swallow that? And it can clear blockages or repair intestinal wall without surgery. Excuse me. Clear blockages? It caused a blockage. Okay, so it needs work. What exactly goes on in your basement? Shannon and her friends, they call themselves biohackers. I'm a body hacker. Kyle and Jen are biohackers. Biohackers? Genetic engineering? A bunch of kids? They make things. The DIY generation turned our basement into a lab. I can hardly get to the washing machine. I do not want you experimenting on yourself. I'll second that. Yeah, seriously, this was very dangerous. You could have cost yourself an operation. You listen to the doctors. Can I have it back? Please? That's up to your mom. I hope this isn't inconvenient. I'm just concerned about what Shannon and her friends are up to. Believe me, they won't mind. They love to show off their lab. Little mad scientists. But you're very supportive. They get so excited. They think they can do anything. I had to give Shannon back that gizmo. She said she'd never speak to me if I didn't. Shannon, look who's here. Yeah. You know that patient of mine you saw today Shannon Yeah I was worried about her so I went to see her lab Matt you can believe it They doing gene sequencing One kid trying to make an affordable Hep C drug Another trying to bioengineer a chicken So we never have to kill another chicken. These kids are doing stuff in a basement that 10 years ago you could only do at a major university or hospital lab. We should go make you feel better. Make you feel better? Matt, when we find the cure for cancer, It might just come out of a lab like that. We're culturing gut bacteria over here. Maybe we can reprogram some Ecolot nistles to boost the immune system. But nistles not dangerous. So what level of safety are you operating at? BSL-1, maybe one and a half. What we're doing here doesn't need more than that. And who's supervising all of this? Ms. Herbert, our biology teacher. But I don't think she really gets what we're doing. She just tries to make sure we don't kill ourselves. Oh, this is cool. Kyle, show her the ear. He took a slice of apple and then planted it with HeLa cells. The cellulose in the apple is kind of like scaffolding for the cells to grow on. Wow. That really looks like an ear. Well, it's not. I carved it to make it look like one. But it's not apple anymore, either. Well, when I was your age, I was working with hippocampal cultures, studying the transduction pathways with short, interfering DNA. I know. Big deal. So 1995. You were a science geek, too? Mm-hmm. And I would have killed to have a place like this. Let me ask you a question. What do you know about non-Hodgkin's lymphoma? Blood cancer. Body produces a lot of abnormal lymphocytes. How'd you like to give it a shot?